Barbara Sehr has a steady algorithm that dances to a different aerial density. OK, she's a funny technical writer who brings out her recently diminished profile, her artificial intelligence, and her native German sense of humor. Despite all that, she is not only funny — she is the only known journalist to interview Bill Gates as both a male and female reporter. Visit her Web site: www.liftingthefog.com

Supreme Attack: The Crowd That Can’t Soot Straight

First, I’m going to make all of my teabagger friends extremely happy. I will never seek an appointment to the Supreme Court. If nominated, I will not accept, if approved by the US Senate I will not sit. Not that my total lack of a legal background would ever qualify me for appointment by a sane President.

I say that, as I ponder the current state-of-the-art appointment process suffered by Sonia Sotomayor a year ago and now even more intensely by Solicitor General Elena Kagan. I have suffered a lot of abuse in my life — be it from family, employers or former “friends,” but at least I have never caught the attention of the cable news crowd in search of a talking point. George Orwell would be stunned by the level of discourse that now passes as “legitimate” among the crowd that can’t seem to soot straight.
Is Elena Kagan’s appointment a sign that President Obama has “dummied down the Supreme Court?” as Bay Buchanan suggested of the former Dean of Harvard Law School and the current Solicitor General of the United States. Is she unable to experience the courthouse for the dead trees in her law library, since she has never served a day behind the bench? More importantly, does the fact that she once played a “mean game of softball” mean that Ms. Kagan is by definition a lesbian?
In the appointment of any Supreme Court justice there are questions to be answered – including the serious issues that come before the court. When does life begin? When does a corporation become human? Can corporations that own gay bars merge?
Even those of us who would prefer to use the left side entrance to the Supreme Court, have some questions about the woman who once clerked for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall, as Republicans remember him, was one of the most “activist” judges of all time. His nomination snuck through the US Senate back in the 60s at a time when there were no cable news channels, and newspapers were still running black and white photos of sheriff’s dogs ripping at the flesh of young black students trying to get an education. In the absence of color TV, few people noticed that Marshall was black, much like Republican President Dwight Eisenhower failed to notice that his appointment to be Chief Justice, former GOP California Gov. Earl Warren, would never achieve the endorsement of Republicans today. President Lyndon Johnson was able to sneak Marshall through the Senate after newspapers stopped running separate job ads for “coloreds” and “whites.”
On the left, the questions about Kagan go a little deeper. Because Kagan has defended some of the Bush administration’s questionable human rights policies — i.e. torture definitions written by the Bush Justice Department — fear abounds that Kagan might be a Trojan horse like Warren was for Eisenhower, and David Souter was for Bush the elder. As Solicitor General, however, Kagan is obliged to act as the representative of the President and the people of the United States before the Supreme Court.
A comedian friend of mine admits to being bi-sexual on stage, a condition she says makes some people think that she can have sex with everyone. “No way, “she says.”Have you seen everyone? “
Elena Kagan, like Sotomayor before her , fails as thoughtless America’s “sex object.” So do I, of course. Perhaps one of those intensely coiffed FOX anchors would look good in a black robe?